In his December 2012 address to the nation, President Nazarbayev presented an ambitious program of political, economic and social transformations aimed at permitting Kazakhstan to become one of the world’s thirty most developed and prosperous countries by 2050. Nazarbayev’s decision in mid-January 2013 to reorganize the government, via the establishment of a new ministry in charge of regional development and the optimization of policy functions within existing structures, was the first demonstration of this new course. Later on January 23, the Kazakh president met with members of his government in order to provide concrete guidelines for the short- and medium-term.

On November 21, the local prosecutor's office of Kazakhstan's Almaty region officially requested the provincial court to order an administrative closure of over forty print and online media outlets, including the Russian-language Respublika web-portal and the popular Vzglyad newspaper. The complaint also included the names of two television channels (K-Plus and Stan.tv) whose frequent reporting on Kazakhstan's domestic politics are widely considered as the most outspoken source of criticism of the country's President Nursultan Nazarbayev and his government, especially after the December 2011 bloody events in Zhanaozen.

The Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst is a biweekly publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Transatlantic Research and Policy Center affiliated with the American Foreign Policy Council, Washington DC., and the Institute for Security and Development Policy, Stockholm. For 15 years, the Analyst has brought cutting edge analysis of the region geared toward a practitioner audience.